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Plan for luxury yacht ban

The footballer Wayne Rooney and his wife, Coleen McLoughlin, weighed anchor there last summer to celebrate their wedding. Jennifer Lopez used its crystal-clear waters to escape the paparazzi on a super-yacht owned by Dolce & Gabbana. But the Italian riviera’s reputation as a millionaires’ summer playground could be at risk after the Liguria region announced plans to ban boats from dropping anchor along its coast.

Liguria’s environment councillor, Franco Zunino, says that boats anchoring in secluded coves are destroying the riviera’s Posidonia seagrass meadows, home to a wide variety of marine fauna including seahorses, starfish and wrasse, and identified in an EU habitats directive.

Boats are already banned from dropping anchor in front of the exclusive resort of Portofino. Under the plans, 26 new sites from the French border to neighbouring Tuscany will be off limits to vessels over five metres — “practically all of them,” according to the National Association of Shipbuilders. The association likened the plan to “changing the highway code at every [regional] border.”

Yacht owners including national football coach Marcello Lippi attacked the ban. “Throwing down anchor in a beautiful little cove is part of the pleasure of boating,” he told Corriere della Sera. The region is weighing up land-controlled “intelligent buoys” used in Greece and Spain that allow boats to moor without damaging the seabed.

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